Putting Fear in a Mother's Heart

Really, I think fear would be an understatement of what happened earlier this week.

Terror would probably more accurately describe the emotions in my heart.

I'm sure from the title, you've already figured out one of the main culprits involved in the situation. The boys have two windows in their room ~ one slider and one casement. The slider is very tempting for Zachary to open {which he does frequently} and we in turn have had many talks and 'bathroom discussions' about the danger of opening the window...falling out of a window, etc... The slider window opens and has a fairly good drop, but into the garden/grass area.

The casement window , however. has a two story drop onto a cement pad. But because the casement window has a double lock and one of the locks is up high {and we assumed out of reach}, we didn't really give it a second thought.

{Enter the second thought}.

Monday morning I opened the boy's door to find that Zachary had pulled up the blinds, managed to unlock the window, opened the window, and REMOVED THE SCREEN. When I walked in, he was holding Kaleb up so that Kaleb could look outside. Both of Kaleb's arms were hanging over the sill and outside and he was leaning part of his body out of the window.

{My stomach is doing flips as I'm just typing this}.

I'm not really quite sure how I reacted ~ other than quickly ~ to get both boys away from the impending danger. I do know there were many tears {from at least two of us}.

And just a little FYI ~ there's a lovely little screw on the side of the casement handle that allows you to remove the handle from a casement window so that the window can't be opened.

Yes. We've taken the handle off.

No. I haven't gotten over the scare quite yet.

Yes ~ I am so thankful that both of my boys are safe and that there isn't a different ending to this story.